HFOSS: VizAudio & DOTS

[Bryen <suserocks bryen com>]

In yesterday's meeting there was some discussion about HFOSS projects.
We already agreed on sending MouseTrap for one project and we're now in
the final week of determining which project to send to HFOSS for the
second intern.

This must be discussed and decided upon by the end of this week.

In previous discussions, we had talked about proposing a new concept in
visual audio (we did come up with a new name yesterday, VizAudio) to
reach out to Deaf users.  To refresh your memory on this proposal, see
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-accessibility-list/2009-February/msg00046.html
Disclaimer:  This idea was proposed by me.

Eitan (eeejay) brought up another possible project to consider as a
candidate for HFOSS Internship.  DOTS for literal braille translation.
Here is his announcment of DOTS at
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-accessibility-list/2009-February/msg00056.html

Both projects are equally valid and potentially good candidates.   Below
I will list the pros and cons discussed during the meeting and then we
can take off from there and get into the meaty discussion, okay
folks?  :-)

(Note to eeejay)  Please add your comments to the pros/cons list as I
don't want to appear one-sided on this discussion.

Code:
Code exists for DOTS. This helps because it is something the interns can
work directly on.  DOTS also benefits from having a strong mentor in
eeejay.  VizAudio does not presently have any code and exists as a
concept.  However, its debated whether it needs to be its own separate
code/app or simply be an enhancement of the existing notify-daemon that
GNOME already has.   We all know notify could use some serious love.

Reach:
DOTS reaches the market where braille printers (embossers) exist.  How
large that market is, is not clear at this time.  VizAudio can reach a
broader market without need for additional hardware and is beneficial
not only for Deaf users, but also for anyone who wishes visual events.

Blind market gets a lot of attention in Linux.  Deaf market has well...
almost zilch.  As Willie stated, the Deaf community has been left behind
for too long.  (Bless his heart.)

As a side note, there was some discussion about whether to use the
existing libnotify/notify-daemon or put it into the new proposal from
Ubuntu for Notify-OSD.   After some thought, my feeling is this:  There
is interesting potential for notify-osd, but at this point in time, it
may be a long time before it becomes a fully upstreamed implementation
and I would rather we focus on existing modules that all distros can
immediately take advantage of and participate in.   I do hope that
notify-osd would at some point integrate the concepts of VizAudio.
Nothing personal against notify-osd, just feel that I don't want to sit
around waiting for it when I've been waiting for visual audio for a
loooooong time.





  
-- 
Bryen Yunashko
openSUSE Board Member
openSUSE-GNOME Team Member
GNOME-A11y Team Member